Before you can achieve anything worthwhile and before you can receive any of God’s promises and blessings you’ll have to deal with the temptation to take a shortcut. Our jails and graves are full of people who decided to take a shortcut. What’s interesting is that many of them were motivated by the desire to do the right thing, but they went about it the wrong way. The problem was not the destination they had chosen, the problem was the road they took to arrive at that destination. The reason we choose to take shortcuts is not that we don’t know how to get to where we want to go. The reason is that we don’t want to wait or pay the price to get there. So we look for the path of least resistance. The tragedy is that in the end we always lose far more than the time or effort we averted. 

If anyone ever deserved to take a shortcut it had to be Joseph. Joseph was the youngest of eleven brothers and the favorite of his father. For this his brothers hated him and at age 17 they sold him to slave merchants, telling their father that he had been killed. He was taken to Egypt where he was auctioned off to Potiphar the Captain of the army of Egypt. As a slave, he worked his way up to becoming in charge of running everything in Potiphar’s house. He wasn’t free but at least things were moving in a positive direction. 

One day after four years a shortcut opened up for Joseph. Potiphar’s wife felt attracted to him and she offered him the opportunity to be with her. Think about it, Joseph is far away from his home, years have gone by, God has not answered his prayers and Potiphar’s wife makes him a proposal. Joseph must have thought; can this be the opportunity that I’ve been waiting for? What are the consequences of refusing this proposal? But for Joseph, in the midst of what appeared to be a difficult decision, he knew exactly what he had to do.

No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. – Genesis 39: 9-10 NIV

Joseph had determined that to do what was right was far more important than to do what was convenient at that moment. Years later Joseph became the second in command in Egypt, the most powerful nation in the world at that time, and was able to save not only Egypt but his entire family as well. 

Through Joseph’s example, we learn how to avoid the pitfalls of taking a shortcut. Because the truth is that it’s not difficult to identify a shortcut. When you look at your options, those that have elements of deceit or cause you to choose to violate your values or beliefs, that’s a shortcut not worth taking. For Joseph, it was clear, no matter what the offer is he determined that he could not “sin against God.”